Church record Sunday: Reading burial records for clues

can be as exciting as reading the owner’s manual of your latest technology purchase. Shame on me for poking fun at the source of my paycheck, but I do understand–I only read those manuals myself if and only if something isn’t working. I prefer a good mystery or biography. But I entertained myself by reading more burial records this weekend with the latest bluster of fall weather we’ve had–cold, rain, and dreary. After all, isn’t genealogy both a bit of a mystery and part of the process of writing one’s family’s biography?

I do believe the record keeper misspelled the last name and this location is where I took the photo–Section 3 of the cemetery.

Constantia’s address is given as a residence on Maple Street, which would place her within a block or so of St. Adalbert’s parish in the Lagrinka neighborhood. I had hoped this clue would give me a hint about her, but it didn’t. Sometimes the parish records noted the survivors or nearest relatives; however, not so in the case. Here is the record of Constantia’s burial through St. Adalbert:

The remarks indicate that she received the sacraments of penance and extreme unction (last rites) prior to passing away. This indicates to me she did not die alone and someone would have had to call the priest for this function. This is the very earliest Mierzejewski death I’ve located so far in Toledo. Her age, 20, indicates she was born during the time span my grandfather, grandmother, and their siblings were born–1883. So my guess is that she would not have immigrated alone to the US–it was highly unusual for women at this time to come alone while traveling from Europe. (I’ve only noted this twice and each time I cannot ascertain for sure the women traveled alone.) It appears as if there were Mierzejewskis settling in Toledo as early as sometime after 1910. This point may become more important later as more of my grandparent’s and their siblings’ movements are discovered–remember my grandfather and his brother, Marzel, were located in Massachusetts and Cleveland around 1909. So someone had to tip Wladyslaw off about how great life was on the great north coast. A possible theory would be that Constantia is a relative of my grandmother, Helena. It was Helena’s brother, Jan, with whom Wladyslaw and Helena would live at 1763 Buckingham when they arrived in Toledo in 1923. And Buckingham is perhaps only 4 miles or so from the Maple Street address.